


Talking to Yourself

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, He Does Feel Bad about It, Hearing Voices, Lil Cal - Freeform, M/M, Messiah Complex Karkat, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Psychology, Screwed-Up Relationship, Somewhat Crazy Gamzee, The Absolute Wrong Way to Care about Someone, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 21:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> You hate him for leaving.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talking to Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> Super emotional drabblefic that is meant to be very much canon, as you will all hate me for later.
> 
> Decide for yourselves how much of this was anyone's fault and how much of it was Karkat and Gamzee just being bad for each other.

_Come back to yourself_ , these hands say, and hot fingers brand your flesh like the Alternian sunscorch. These dangerous hours, you don’t want no one close. But you have shackles around your wrists in indigo type and throat bruised from working your shoutbox—and you are powerless as a wriggler tumped on its back in the sopor slime.

And it’s cruel, how less you want the touch for its being kind.

 _Come back to your pan_ —well, you don’t want to. You’re higher than you ever been, up with the stars. The elation of these lights gobbles up any guilt or sorrow, and those funny little shadows down below don’t mean a thing to you but something more to dance upon. You don’t want to go back to the ground and the dirt and the sick-bellied hush of your friends too strangled with grief to ever gigglesnort at all.

_Come back, come back, shooosh._

Karkat molds you from the starlight, on your knees, makes you a thing of skin and bone again with his fiery bare hands. You’re still smiling awhile, because your thinkpan stays up with the stars until the very end.

  
0000  
  


You never had no quarrel with Equius. Sure, there was that “highblood” thing he called you, making you supremely uncomfortable and the like, but it was a laugh more than anything else. You had no quarrel at all with his little kitty sister, and these new scars on you do not match any kind of smile. You must have misplaced your real face.

Karkat is the one who washes your hands. There was blue on them. Must have—

There was no green, and no one has—no one has found Nepeta. So. Maybe she’s.

Maybe?

They did find Tavros. That, you recall.

Karkat’s warm fingers uncurl yours one by one—no clubs to hold onto; he already took those, so your claws notched into your hand instead and your blood was with theirs (no, _his_ , and only his; you’re sure there was no olive green, you’d swear by it). He’s quiet and calm and has a washcloth soaked to feel comfortably warm. You wonder where he learned the right temperature, who explained that highbloods can’t stand to touch heat. Your jaw still stings from the touch of his palms.

Karkat looks up at you, coaxing even the bloodstains from your fingertips, all patience like you never even knew. Again, you question, _who taught him that?_ Who taught him to look on you like he knows you, like it’s soft? Who taught him how to handle a highblood, how to handle—cause aren’t you’re crazy, ain’t you? Voices in your pans telling you how to find the stars and you don’t hardly remember and you keep having to remind yourself that Nepeta must just be up in the vents or something, you would have gone there, you would have hid—

Karkat looks on you like pitylove, and you think you might be moirails, cause of that pity.

It turns your stomach.

How long until it goes away, until he takes it away? Ain’t yours. Ain’t done a thing to earn it. Karkat couldn’t think the less of you if he tried and that is not the way pity works, you know; you have to do it the way you pitied Tavros, pity the flaw in the heart of the gem.

You pity Karkat? Answer is yes. Karkat, little as he is, only touched you because your clubs stayed still, your roars stayed helpless, and your soul stayed engraved with the care of him. That’s your pity. You will never do him harm.

He looks up like the purest absolution, even if you know he hates you more than he pities. When he comes closer, creaking upright with how long he’s been crouched and cleaning your claws, you don’t bother to growl. He presses a new, chilled washcloth to your jaw. You’ve been wearing the same numb smile since he made you a troll again, and it tightens. He shushes you muted in the quiet of the ablution trap as his cloth slides back and forth, back and forth.

Being without your paint should shame you, but what do you need it for? What honor have you not thrown away tonight? You close your eyes and let him do his worst and groan in the back of your throat. It takes you entirely too long with him papping you through his washcloth for you to realize it’s not your paint he’s wiping away, but your dumbass fucking smile.

You let it fall. Unwinding comes as shaking, all over, to your bones, even your breaths going slick and rattling in your windtube, head crushed into his shoulder as you grit your teeth and muffle the sound of you, him so hot and touching and refusing to make you ash.

“Shhh-shh-shhh,” Karkat coaxes you, just a little desperately, gentlest fucking thing, handling you like butterfly wings and hatchling clumsiness, everything he’s doing saying he loves you, that it’s pale.

Palest of pale, just like Nepeta and Equius.

And they find her. In the vents. You don’t think she chose to go in there, probably not, on account that they find her cold and twisted up and Karkat don’t look at you with hatred even then.

But why, though?

   
0000

Why ain’t important, far enough down the line. Karkat knows how to spoil you when you don’t fuck up too bad. Jam it out with you slow enough that he reaches where the voices recline in your thinkpan, whispering you directions back up to those dizzying, glorious stars. He makes them snarl and silence, withering away like bad roots, and you could listen to him all and forever. He’s got a liking to fuss. Makes sure you eat (ain’t hungry), and sleep, even if he won’t (but nightmares) and get dressed in something clean each morning, even if you can’t budge from the pile. You put on some weight and Karkat smiles brighter than anything when he tells you that he can’t see all your ribs anymore. You let him comb out your hair some; gives him something to do when you jam. You’d expect him to get frustrated and yank as he talks, but however angry his growling, he plays at your wild hair like it’s finer than silk.

First pale kiss goes well up and down your spine, from horntip to toeclaw. One drums nervous at the floor; one goes tingling with sweet pity, your hand comes up and he lets you hug on him a moment.

The part of you that resents how he coddles you is smothered under the rest—that helpless, chained-down love, gratitude and guilt, _heavy_ and crowning you with the only thing you have that is worthwhile. Let him fuss over your meals and brush the wrinkles from your shirt and purr you to relaxation. It makes him happy. No reason you need to argue.

You figure the hurt in you ain’t ever like to go away. What you’ve done can’t be undone, can’t be wished or washed or loved away.

He does know you’re crazy, right? He does know that there ain’t a damn thing about you he likes—or has he forgotten? Has he made you up into something better in his thinkpan?

He even see you anymore, what shade of you there is left in full bellies and soft dreams and loving hands?

   
0000  
  


Part of you wants this forever.

Part of you just hopes you’ll die already, cause it’s coming, you’re sure of it; it’s coming and you’re going to have to pay what you owe.

   
0000  
  


You get better. Karkat looks outward of you and your friends are, inevitably, a mangle of chaos. Humans and trolls in one space, none of them handling themselves very well, whether it’s depression or grief or just separation anxiety. Karkat don’t know how to leave well enough alone (which explains you, but this ain’t about you). He starts having to go involve himself in their messes, battle their apathies, fit them into his hands for healing.

And you see the opportunity, maybe, to fix yourself. To try to get at that guilt in you. Prove you can look after your own and cause no harm and be these things Karkat’s faith tells you that you have.

That was a motherfucking error on your part.

   
0000  
  


You see him often enough. Each time you meet, it’s all embrace and huddle and adore. Missed him like a chunk hacked out of you, could just hold him and cry. Never want to leave him again. And he’s happy with you too, winces when he burns your skin, lights up as you shuffle over and just _exist_ with him. Tells you everything. Illuminates whole star charts of planning. Proves memorable to every conversation you’ve forgotten—“no, of course not, I never comb there cause it hurts you, dumbass” and “this is one of your favorites right? I don’t mind” and “you said before you wanted one of these, so I just thought”—returns the memories to you, and every lonely hour seems to have a decade of happiness to argue with.

It’s not so bad, even, when he leaves again and you got your own shit to do. Not at first. Keep pestering him and he’s all bitching at you and fussing and grouchy and letting you shush him. At first. But then the messages start to dwindle. He starts answering you shorter and shorter (must be busy). You try to entertain—be funny, be happy. Shorter replies still, so he don’t like that. Get morose, darker contemplation in your chats, and maybe you were flirting some, putting out that you could use a jam. That’s when he don’t complain to you no more himself.

He makes threats, without seeming to notice. _Can’t deal with it right now_ and _if you can’t just handle that yourself, you don’t need to be leaving your respiteblock_ and _no one is that stupid_. Temper, mostly; you’re in the vents enough to know how worked up he is. You can’t just go down and calm him either, since you’re in exile, either from your friends fearing or having vengeful thoughts. Best you don’t. Wait, try bothering him again next evening.

Thing is, he’s so happy every time he visits. Every time. Like a motherfucker don’t even see that you’re messaging him less and less too, or that you ain’t hardly ever got something solid to talk on. Where the words come from when you’re together, you don’t know. They are plentiful and vibrate in the air so happy. When you’re with him, you almost believe you dreamed the whole thing up, this racking lonely in your guts, this sense of him not wanting to talk at you no more, you the burden, you the fucking fool, the _embarrassment_.

You wonder what he sees when he looks on your face, that makes him light up so, when if you try to make him listen, he pushes you away.

And he tells you how pale he is, sweetest pity words, and they are a cancer now, they are a brutality, you don’t want to believe them, because he don’t pity you the way you do him, but you have no power at all over the feeling in your soul.

You love him. You apologize, then, you make yourself quieter, and when you reach out and he’s there, you’re every excitement and hope and he will, always, let you down again.

  
0000

You want to run from him, from all of this, and you don’t know how. Sopor’s gone. Voices are still there, but them you deny yourself—won’t hurt someone ever again, you swear, never; you have well and motherfucking learned.

It ain’t like you have any real quarrel with Terezi neither. More likely, she has one with you. You don’t really remember who picked the fight.

Just remember it hurting, the hatred honest—first real thing you felt since fire palms made you new—and you shudder all over, recognizing an addiction for what it is.

You don’t fight it. You sink, because that’s your talent. And she is the _best_ at blacking out every thought in your thinkpan. You don’t think about Karkat, or when you do, it’s a starlight kind of thought. He’s so far below you. He can’t ever touch you no more. He’s just there for you to play with and then walk away from and _nothing hurts._

You should probably have understood then that you never really got far away from the voices at all, did you? But in the crush of quiet and alone and the blessing that is grief of lost love, you have always had an especial talent for talking to yourself.

And you keep right on—talk to yourself, laugh, fall into the stars, and he falls into the fire. Lava below, blood on him, but he’ll be alright. He’ll be better off. Something hot enough to burn will love him all truest, fill those empty spaces in him, and unlike you, he will never be able to leave the flames. He’ll never be alone again, your little miracle.

And the worst part is that you love him so much you hate him for leaving to sink down below.


End file.
